MAC-V SOG

Summary

The Antihero Podcast - Episode: MACV SOG
Release Date: April 28, 2025
Host: The Antihero Podcast

---

Introduction

In this compelling episode of The Antihero Podcast, host Brent Tucker welcomes Special Forces veteran Jim Day to discuss his experiences with the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV SOG). Joined by former guest and podcast host Nate, the conversation delves deep into the clandestine operations, challenges, and enduring camaraderie of those who served in one of the most elite units during the Vietnam War.

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Understanding MACV SOG

Brent Tucker (00:00):
“As an SF guy like you, Jim, you hear stories to this day about MACV SOG teams and cross-border operations and initial halo teams that inserted and were never heard from again. Are there truth to those stories or just talking about them?”

Jim Day (00:22):
“At the Specialist Operations Association reunion this last fall, the 60th anniversary for MACV SOG, they gave a coin to everybody that attended. On the coin, all the missing teams were listed—not missing individuals.”

This exchange sets the stage for a detailed exploration of MACV SOG's covert missions and the enduring mystery surrounding missing teams.

---

Jim Day’s Journey into Special Forces

Brent Tucker (05:34):
“There's a lot of our listeners that would have known about Special Forces, veterans themselves, but when you went in, what year did you join?”

Jim Day (05:36):
“I joined the Army in '67 and got into the training group early, around '68, which was a qualification course for new guys.”

Jim's decision to join the Army was influenced by a strong family tradition of military service, as he explains:

Jim Day (06:01):
“My family was deeply rooted in the military. I always wanted to go to Vietnam, as reflected in every dream sheet I filled out in the Army.”

Despite his fears about war, Jim's commitment to serving led him to volunteer for MACV SOG, unaware of the true nature of his missions.

---

Training and Assignment to MACV SOG

Brent Tucker (07:39):
“So how did you get into MACV SOG?”

Jim Day (07:39):
“I volunteered without knowing much about it. We ended up in Bami Tuit, which later became Command and Control Detachment South after combining Project Omega and Project Sigma.”

Jim details the structure and evolution of MACV SOG, emphasizing the unit's specialization in cross-border reconnaissance missions, primarily in Cambodia.

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Operational Insights and Mission Experiences

Jim Day (12:30):
“Our missions typically lasted five to seven days, involving tapping phone lines and taking photographs in hostile territories with 40 to 50,000 enemy combatants in the area.”

One of the most harrowing missions involved immediate engagement upon insertion:

Jim Day (23:54):
“We went into Golf 80 and immediately encountered a platoon. We called for extraction right away because we were surrounded.”

The high casualty rates and constant threats underscored the perilous nature of MACV SOG operations.

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Casualties and Missing Teams

Brent Tucker (23:54):
“MACV SOG had close to an 80% casualty rate, didn’t you?”

Jim Day (60:50):
“I don’t know the exact rate, but it was very high. Many teams went missing, and efforts are ongoing to honor them with a Congressional Gold Medal.”

The discussion highlights the immense risks faced by SOG teams and the ongoing efforts to recognize their sacrifices.

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Interunit Relations and Recognition

Jim Day (73:03):
“After the war, many SOG members felt excluded from the Special Forces community because they weren’t on A-teams. This led to the formation of separate associations like the Special Operations Association (SOA).”

The episode explores the tension between MACV SOG and other Special Forces branches, emphasizing the unique contributions of SOG veterans.

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Reintegration and Aftermath

Jim Day (103:08):
“Coming home was tough. I remember filling out forms at a blood drive and being outright rejected by the nurse.”

Jim shares the emotional and social challenges faced by veterans returning from Vietnam, contrasting it with the more supportive environment observed in later generations.

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Integrity and Accountability in the Veteran Community

Nate (94:01):
“We hold people accountable because so many of our friends sacrificed their lives. It’s essential to honor their legacy by ensuring authenticity.”

The hosts discuss the importance of maintaining integrity within the veteran community, addressing issues like stolen valor and the responsibility of veterans to uphold the truth about their experiences.

---

Personal Stories and Reflections

Throughout the episode, Jim Day recounts numerous missions, showcasing both the resilience and the human side of soldiers in MACV SOG. From dealing with wildlife encounters like tigers and snakes to navigating the psychological toll of constant danger, these stories provide a raw and unfiltered look into the lives of Special Forces operatives.

Notable Quote (57:56) - Jim Day:
“I never ran out of ammunition. That was my motto.”

---

Conclusion

The Antihero Podcast’s episode on MACV SOG offers an in-depth and poignant exploration of the elite unit's operations during the Vietnam War. Through Jim Day’s firsthand accounts, listeners gain a profound understanding of the bravery, sacrifices, and enduring bonds formed amidst the chaos of war. The episode not only honors the legacy of MACV SOG but also underscores the ongoing need to recognize and support veterans who served in these covert roles.

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Key Takeaways:

• MACV SOG's Role: Specialized in cross-border reconnaissance and covert operations in Vietnam and Cambodia.
• High Casualty Rates: Significant losses with many teams going missing, highlighting the extreme dangers faced.
• Interunit Relations: Tensions with other Special Forces branches led to the formation of separate veteran associations.
• Reintegration Challenges: Veterans struggled with societal reintegration and recognition upon returning home.
• Integrity in the Community: Emphasis on maintaining honesty and accountability among veterans to honor fallen comrades.

Notable Quotes:

• Jim Day (00:22): “They gave a coin to everybody that went and on the coin, there was listed all the missing teams.”
• Jim Day (23:54): “We start off the LZ and we immediately spot guys. So we call up the helicopter, they come and get us.”
• Jim Day (60:50): “There is a group out there trying to get MAGV SOG a Congressional Gold Medal.”
• Jim Day (103:08): “I remember filling out forms at a blood drive and being outright rejected by the nurse.”
• Jim Day (57:56): “I never ran out of ammunition. That was my motto.”

---

This summary encapsulates the essence of the podcast episode, providing a comprehensive overview while highlighting key moments and insights shared by Jim Day and the hosts.

Transcript

[Brent Tucker]

As an SF guy like you hear stories to this day about MACV SOG teams and cross border operations and initial halo teams that inserted and that were never heard from again. Teams that were gone in and told hey, how you get back is on you. Are there truth to those type of stories or just talking about them?

[Jim Day]

Well, at the Specialist Operations association reunion this, this last fall and it was the 60th anniversary for MACV SOG, they, they gave a coin to everybody that went and on, on the coin there was listed all the missing teams. Not missing individuals.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, whole teams.

[Jim Day]

Missing teams.

[Tyler]

Hold on, we're not recording.

[Brent Tucker]

Wanna buy a raffle?

[Tyler]

Do you wanna buy a shirt to support military nets? People wanna see their sausage get made an of.

[Brent Tucker]

Of inappropriateness. Something happens in my family tonight. The Delta Force isn't, isn't coming to rescue my, my family, my kids. Like it is first responders.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

That are, that are going to save my family.

[Tyler]

They want the culture to be down. They want people to not want to be cops. And the people that do want to be cops are now walking into the job scared to do the job.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm going to try to act like it didn't happen, although we, we all know it did.

[Jim Day]

JV team for life. Well, all I can say is you guys are real professional.

[Nate]

Well, that's not the goal. Anybody else either of our channels before? Jim, it's not over yet.

[Brent Tucker]

We'll change your mind.

[Nate]

Not what these two channels are known for is professionalism. But we appreciate it.

[Tyler]

All right, welcome back to the Anti Hero podcast. Part Delta Force, part Street Cop. All truth. I'm Tyler, owner of Counterculture Inc. Go to Counterculture and you can get Refracted Wolf Apparel. You can get Counterculture Apparel. It's a new distributor, it's a new name, but you can still get all the great refractive Wolf. It's just easier on logistics. So go to countercultureincthreads.com use promo code Anti Hero and get 15% off.

[Brent Tucker]

I love it. I'm a, I'm a big fan of what you're doing over there, Tyler. And I'm Brent Tucker, owner of First Responder Coffee Company and First Responder Cigar Company. Use promo code FRCC15. That's FRCC15. To get 15% off. The world's best coffee and cigars.

[Tyler]

And of course this episode is brought to you by HPTRT Human performance. Go to hptrt.com use promo code HERO and get 20% off. Not just your first initial order, but every single month you'll get 20% off. I know there's better promo codes out here, but use ours. If you know, you know.

[Jim Day]

But yeah.

[Tyler]

HPTRT.com use promo code HERO and get 20% off every single month. Plus, if you've had blood work done in the last six months and you're looking to come over to HPTRT, you could upload that blood work and as long as it's done within the last six months, either va, other clinics, it doesn't matter, they'll waive your, your fees and we'll be able to use that blood work for your initial doctor's appointment. So go to HPTRD.com promo code HERO20OFF every month.

[Brent Tucker]

And don't forget about our Patreon. We still have the most affordable Patreon in the business. Join and get behind the scenes access. Join our gun forums or fitness forums or general discussion. Weigh in on who our next guest is and even direct message me and Tyler for, for questions. And also every Thursday night we still do the live 8pm Eastern time every Thursday. It's for the boys.

[Tyler]

It's a good time. We're doing that tonight, actually.

[Brent Tucker]

Doing it tonight.

[Nate]

That's right.

[Brent Tucker]

Big good one. You ready? Anything else you want? We gotta, we gotta put out. Wanna put out.

[Tyler]

Forgot we were doing a podcast.

[Brent Tucker]

Here we go. With us today we have Jim Day Mac V SOG veteran, 19 months in the country of Vietnam. I don't geek out about a lot of guests, but to make it uncomfortable, Jim, you're one of them. I am very excited to have you on the podcast and in case you don't know, with us as well is former guest and host of his own podcast, Valhalla vft. Nate.

[Nate]

Yep. What's up, everybody?

[Tyler]

Not even going to try to say his last name because.

[Jim Day]

Very good.

[Brent Tucker]

Thank you. Nate Kaka. It. I was going to say your last name and then I questioned myself and then by the time you brought it up, it hit me. I was like, no, no, I got it.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that was it.

[Brent Tucker]

I wish I thought of the frost a couple seconds earlier. It had been a little smoother, but so I got it. So it's going to be, it's going to be the whole crew here with us today listening to Jim, hearing his story. Jim, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I can't wait to dig in and, and, and hear, hear your experiences. Be honest with you.

[Jim Day]

We'll dig in.

[Brent Tucker]

All right. Yeah, well, let's dig in from, let's dig in from the beginning. There's There's a lot of, you know, of our listeners that would, you know, would have known about Special Forces. Hey. That, you know, they may be Special Forces veterans, but when you went in what year, what year did you join?

[Jim Day]

I joined the army in 67.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And. And I probably got the training group early. 68, which for us old guys, it was training group. For the new guys, it was qualification course.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Heck, let's take a step back. I mean, the, the. The Vietnam was. Was. Was going on when, when you joined.

[Jim Day]

Absolutely.

[Brent Tucker]

Why'd you join?

[Jim Day]

Well, that's sort of a hard question to answer, but somewhat like Nate, you know, his granddad was in the 82nd World War II. His dad was Special Forces. If you go to the family cemetery in Fort Meade, Florida, the original Fort Meade, I always throw that in. And you look at the tombstones, all the adult males have their rank and their unit on the tombstones.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

I mean, that's, that's what my family did.

[Brent Tucker]

So what this was. Was Vietnam a reason that, that you joined? Did you join to go to war or you just weren't scared of war, you were going to join regardless?

[Jim Day]

Well, I sort of scared of scared of war, but no, I. Every dream sheet that I filled out in the Army, I put down. I wanted to go to Vietnam.

[Nate]

Jim. I feel like if you were scared of war, you. You chose the worst job.

[Jim Day]

And. And I did. You know, and a lot of it was ignorance.

[Nate]

You know, you.

[Jim Day]

You guys were talking about before, you know, how. How did you get into Mac V. Sog and, and I got into Mac vsog because I didn't have a clue. You know, I mean, their, their fifth group headquarters in the Trang, basically, they said, if, if you want to volunteer for this, we can't tell you what they do.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you know, I've been to Nhraang. I've been in the Trang.

[Jim Day]

So have I been 2013. When were you.

[Brent Tucker]

How were you and. Well, then I guess I was there before. After you and then before you. I was there 96. So we were talking about it right before the podcast. So again, a lot of current listeners are going to hear things like, you know, me And Nate were 18 echoes and how, how the, you know, how SF works now. But it hadn't always been that way back when you joined. And I don't want to go too deep into the weeds, things that don't matter a whole lot. But SF eventually became a branch, and when it became a branch, we got our own moss. But before it became A branch. It was what I call an identifier. So talk. What was your MOS or your identifier? What was it called back then after you went through?

[Jim Day]

Well, I actually did two schools. One after I graduated and went to third group. The first one I did was combat engineer, which in those days was 12 Bravo. And. And then after I got the third group, I went back to training group and did the ONI Corps, which Operations and intelligence. Yes. Yeah. And that. That was 11F.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Yeah, but when. But the. The combat engineer was 12 Bravo. But when. But when you were a engineer sergeant for sf, what was. What was your full MOS that. That identified that you were a Green Beret engineer?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, it would be 12 Bravo, and then the next number would be your experience level. Mine was four.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And then after that, there was an identifier, and that was S for Special Forces.

[Brent Tucker]

What is. What did the four mean? Is that. Was that an entry level? Was that an exit?

[Jim Day]

No, that. That was pretty high up there.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Because. Because of the training we got, you know, at Bragg, we got, you know, a pretty good experience level.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

It really didn't matter. It didn't affect pay jobs, you know. All right.

[Brent Tucker]

How long before you finish your training did you find yourself in Vietnam?

[Jim Day]

Well, like I said, I was in third group when I graduated.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Which was at Bragg at the time and still is, but there was a big gap in there. But. So my immediate duty upon going to third group was to go back to training group and do the. Do the operations and intelligence course. So I forget how long that took, but I graduated 8-12-68, and I went to Vietnam 12-16-68. And all of that before I went to Vietnam was training.

[Brent Tucker]

You're right. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

I mean, it was basic AIT jump school, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I mean, at that point, I mean, obviously the war is raging. Green Berets were a high commodity that I'm pretty sure it's an imagine that it was understood that, hey, if you're qualified, you're. You're going. Yeah, it was expected.

[Nate]

Well, it's actually, though, like, dad and you both had to go through Mrs. A. It actually wasn't that easy for a lot of Green Berets to get to Vietnam at the time.

[Jim Day]

Well, Mrs. Billy Alexander was in charge of Vietnam assignments.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And. And by the way, Nate's dad is a good friend of mine.

[Nate]

That's how we got him on the show, guys.

[Jim Day]

Connections. Yeah, I got a text from Steve. Yes. They. They want you to be on the podcast okay. But no, every Monday, I would call Mrs. Alexander at the Pentagon and say, where are my orders? And finally one day she said, you know, Jim, your. Your orders are at group headquarters. But they hadn't given me my orders.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Now what they were doing with us, guys that were training was every other night we had to clean group headquarters. Well, if they wanted to keep me there to work, they. They probably should have not put my orders out where I could see them.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm out of here.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. So when I was processing out, you know, the sergeant major said to me, where'd you get those orders? And my answer was, I don't know, Sergeant Major. Somebody just handed them to me. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Should have never sent me to Oweni.

[Jim Day]

Hey, I learned a lot of stuff at O and I. That I use throughout my life.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, the. See you get to Vietnam. Did. Did you work immediately at, like, at an A camp or anything like that?

[Jim Day]

No, I. The Fred Winters, Brian Stockdale, and myself, when we. When we got to NH Trang, and they're doing all the assignments and guys to the different A teams and, you know, and whatever, we volunteered. We volunteered for special assignment, and we knew nothing about it. Okay. So we ended up in Bami Tuit, which at the time was either C5 or B50. B50 would be Project Omega. Okay. And two months later, Project Sigma, which was B56, and. And. And B50, Project Omega combined on 2-11-69 to become Command and Control Detachment South. You know, so can.

[Brent Tucker]

Could you give us just a brief overview of which. Which would have been the. The beginning of that. Of. Of Project Omega and. And some of the things you were just talking about and the differences and why they would have combined them, right?

[Jim Day]

They. They had. They had already formed Command and Control Detachment north and Command and Control Detachment Central.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And. And they wanted, you know, a ccs, Right. And for the South. Yeah, they. They were talking about it, you know, Don Hassey, which Nate knows, who is with the 195th Assault Helicopter Company, which is one of the aviation units that supported us. He will tell you that CCS formed in. In the summer of 68. That's not true. It was February 11, 1969, and that date stands out for me for a number of reasons. But. But anyway, Omega and Sigma, well, the way it was in Vietnam for Special Forces, you know, we had four cores. I core, two core, three core, four core. So C1 was I core, and. And so they had B teams. I know it's different for the way it works now, but it was Actually the same with different names, basically. But so C1 was I core, C2, C3, C4, and then you had C5. C5 was a special operations for Special Forces, and it included B50, which was Omega, B56, which was Sigma, but it also included B52, which was Delta. Not your Delta, Brent, but you know, the forerunner of your Delta project Delta.

[Brent Tucker]

That Charlie Beckwith was running, doing the SNR teams essentially over there in the. In the Mekong Delta. Yeah, yeah. Very cool.

[Jim Day]

They were. They were basically doing the same thing that Omega and Sigma was.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, okay.

[Jim Day]

But they decided they needed that cross border, so. So we separated.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. C. C5 ended up with just the 2, but there was gamma. I think that was B57. Anyway, there's a lot of B teams doing a lot of stuff they don't talk about, you know, so.

[Brent Tucker]

So you went in and you were. You volunteered for this special operations portion of Special Forces.

[Jim Day]

That is correct.

[Brent Tucker]

And you end up going to macvsog. Did you go directly to the MACVSOG command control south or.

[Jim Day]

Well, was it not created when I got there?

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

It was actually all my orders, say C5.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

You know, I was telling you about the orders in January of 69 with Eldon Bargewell and myself on their Spec 4. Elder Barge will retired as a major general, folks. But.

[Brent Tucker]

And was a former Delta Force commander.

[Jim Day]

That is correct.

[Brent Tucker]

Right? Yeah. He worked with Jim, Right? Yeah, yeah. A specialist. They were special together. Yeah, yeah. He asked me if I knew him. I said, I know a man by the name of General Bargewell, but I don't know.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, but see, you. You guys are saying that wrong because you're. You're young. It wasn't specialist. It was Spec 4 because they had.

[Brent Tucker]

All the way up to Spec 7. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

All the way up to Spec 9.

[Brent Tucker]

Get out of here.

[Jim Day]

The guys that did the combo in the White House so you could continue.

[Brent Tucker]

Up in the E ranks and not be enlisted. I'm sorry. And not be an nco.

[Jim Day]

That is correct. They were not nca.

[Brent Tucker]

I forgot about that.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, and. And you said something earlier about Engineer sergeant. No, Engineer Spec five.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

That. That was one.

[Jim Day]

Until it was your staff sergeant.

[Nate]

Whoa.

[Tyler]

That's crazy.

[Brent Tucker]

That is that, man. I completely forgot about it.

[Tyler]

I also didn't know that the infantry didn't get their blue cord until after Vietnam.

[Brent Tucker]

I didn't know that. Yeah.

[Tyler]

There's no World War II blue cord. That's not a thing.

[Brent Tucker]

What do you know why it came about after Vietnam? What prompted It.

[Jim Day]

Vietnam. We wore it when I, when I.

[Nate]

Graduated after World War II.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh.

[Tyler]

So, okay, maybe I was after.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. But it just wasn't A. And it wasn't always there. Yeah, I suppose it came somewhere, but I just assumed it came before that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Earlier than that. The what is Mac before we go to hold. We've been saying Mac V SOG a lot.

[Nate]

Me and Brett actually were.

[Brent Tucker]

I'm. I'm going to be very embarrassed and, and thank you for. Let's be embarrassed together.

[Nate]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

We were training Tampa SWAT yesterday. We're, you know, talking about the possibility of coming on. And I think one was like, what does MACV stand for? And I was like, Military Assistance Observations Groups.

[Nate]

Civilian Brent's like, you're missing like three letters.

[Jim Day]

I couldn't get it. Military Assistance Command via Command.

[Nate]

See the C?

[Jim Day]

We were trying to study Observation Groups Command. Originally it was Special Operations Group. Right. But if you're going to do something that's top secret, you probably shouldn't put up a big sign. So it didn't take them long to figure that out.

[Brent Tucker]

But studies.

[Jim Day]

An observation group. That sounds so. I mean, we're out there.

[Nate]

It's very professor. Yeah. Like a college professor. Studies and observations.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Not only they're. They're studying murder. Observing war crimes that they created. No, I'm just kidding.

[Jim Day]

I will tell you that for the initial briefing when I got to Bamba do was jaw dropping time. Seriously, it was, you know, they started telling us what we were going to do and we wouldn't carry ID and you know, all that, those things. And I'm just standing there going, my God. You know, because like I said, they wouldn't tell you anything before you got there.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And once you're there, you're there.

[Nate]

Sign on the dotted line with no idea what you're going to be doing.

[Jim Day]

That is correct. And, and you know, we, we swore we wouldn't talk about it for 20 years, you know. Yeah, some guys did.

[Brent Tucker]

So what, so when, when, when you get to Mac V sog, what, what was, what was your initial impression of it? At some point you learned what you guys were doing.

[Jim Day]

We learned when we, we got off the plane and we went in and we got brief.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Were, were you excited about what you just signed up for? Were you a little bit nervous? Like, I'm not sure this is what I signed up for. Or you're like, hey, we'll see.

[Jim Day]

I was committed. But I was definitely nervous.

[Brent Tucker]

What did, what did, what did you understand your scope of work to Be, you know, kind of on that day one, you know, presentation.

[Jim Day]

Well, we had our.

[Brent Tucker]

And was it, and was it accurate to what you ended up doing?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, we had the initial briefing. Okay. And then there were seven of us. Okay. And four of us were from the same class. Class 69 1. But the fourth guy was a sergeant first class. And I don't even know what his MOS was, but I'm guessing it was operations and Intelligence. So the three young guys, I mean, the sergeant major gave the assignments after the briefing. Okay. And the three of us were the last guys to go in and see the sergeant major. And he said, I'm sorry boys, you have to go to recon. Oh, serious?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, he let it with I'm sorry. Gosh, yeah.

[Jim Day]

JV team for life.

[Tyler]

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[Jim Day]

JV team for life.

[Brent Tucker]

I know it to some level, like I know this happened, but you know, so I'll go out there and as an SF guy like you, hear stories to this day about macv, SOG teams and cross border Operations and initial halo. Teams that inserted and that were never heard from again, teams that were gone in and told, hey, how you get back is on you. Are there. Is there other truth to those type of stories or just talking about them?

[Jim Day]

Well, at the Specialist Operations association reunion this last fall, and it was the 60th anniversary for MacVsog, they gave a coin to everybody that went. And on the coin, there was listed all the missing teams. Not missing individuals, whole teams, missing teams.

[Brent Tucker]

How many people are on a team?

[Jim Day]

Usually it depended on which unit you were with. At south, typically, a recon team was two sf.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And four indigenous.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Now when we started all the parachuting stuff, and that happened in 70, when we started all of that, then oftentimes the teams would be two Americans and. And two indigenous.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And I say indigenous because we had a lot of different minorities that. That worked for us.

[Nate]

Laos, Cambodian, Thai.

[Jim Day]

Well, we had. Well, first of all, you. You've got all the. All what we called mountain yards. Yep. Okay. You got all those different. Different tribes. Okay. For instance, my team was raday. Great guys. Love those guys. What we're. What.

[Brent Tucker]

What. What differentiations and. Differentiates the raw day from the mountain yards?

[Jim Day]

No, they. They're just one of the tribes in that group.

[Brent Tucker]

Within that group. Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

How were they to work with?

[Jim Day]

Great.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Jim Day]

Yeah. They. They worshiped Americans. I mean, seriously, I was in Third Field Hospital in. In July of 1969. Okay. That's in Saigon, Third Field Hospital. And while I was there, I was there for July 20, 1969. The significance of that is that's the first time they walked on the moon. Okay. And allegedly they had that on the TV and, you know, in the ward. Now I'm laying there thinking, who cares? I'm dying. But when I. When I got back to Bami to it, you know, I saw my team. I said, you know, while. While I was in the hospital, the Americans walked on the moon.

[Brent Tucker]

And, you know, you broke the news to him.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Their response was, of course, Americans can do anything. Seriously.

[Brent Tucker]

I love it. I love it. That American pride.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, and now, real quick, Jim, I don't.

[Nate]

Brent, I don't know if you were in here when we were talking about. Jim was telling us a story about the team he was on. Once you had left that team, that entire team went missing.

[Jim Day]

That's one of that.

[Nate]

Later.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, about two months later. Yeah, that. That's one of the teams that was on the coin.

[Brent Tucker]

Rt Plum, did you hear what happened to them?

[Jim Day]

Oh, they did. Well, yeah, I pretty much know what happened to them, you know. And the reason that I know is because I talked to some of the, some of the pilots that were on the mission trying to get them out. Okay. So yeah, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, the was Obviously, you know, 60 years has passed since, since Vietnam and we, so we've, we've got to hear a lot more, you know, like, like the cross border operation.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

At the time was, did, was that a, was that a known thing? I'm asking, I'm gonna maybe a silly question of source, but I'm asking a couple different ways. What is it a known thing? Was at least a known thing within the SF community or was it only. Or it was a well kept secret that we were doing cross border operations in the last.

[Nate]

Well kept secret because like to talk.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Not like seals, but.

[Nate]

See, it goes back even that far, guys.

[Jim Day]

I got a big kick out of it because we, we flew on, on special aircraft. We call them blackbirds. Okay. And their main job was to monitor radio from different countries around there. And, but there was, there was a SEAL team on, on one of the birds one time. I don't even know what they were doing on there, but I, I tried to be friendly with them. They wouldn't even talk to you, you know.

[Nate]

And I'm thinking nothing's changed.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah, I know. But I'm, I'm thinking here I am running top secret mission stuff, right?

[Brent Tucker]

I can't even talk to you about what I'm doing.

[Jim Day]

Right. I'm just trying to say hello, boys.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh man.

[Jim Day]

But, but those blackbirds that they, they told us now there was a curtain to cut that plane in half.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And, and they told us this is your part of the plane, okay. If you go beyond the curtain, there is a guy with a 45.

[Nate]

Oh God.

[Jim Day]

And he will shoot you.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Jim Day]

Because it had all this top secret.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Tyler]

Security back then.

[Jim Day]

Well, I was never curious enough to.

[Brent Tucker]

So you worked command control south, so what, what area of operations were fell under your guys's jurisdiction?

[Jim Day]

Okay. When, when I got there in late 68, it. It B50 and B56 had run different operations in different locales.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay?

[Jim Day]

But by the time, by the time they were talking about us being command and control south, we only did Cambodia.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, okay. The do. Do you remember what it was like your first, your first time in fact was your first mission as a Green Beret in the can into a cross border operation.

[Jim Day]

My first real mission. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. What's what's that mean? Okay, I'm interested.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. So. So we had our briefing. Okay. And then our immediate assignment was to go back to school. So we, we went. We went down to three core and, and went to what we called 10 school.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

10 being designation for a team leader. And, and the reason that way was, was because that way you could talk in the clear. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

All right.

[Jim Day]

You could say the 10 is W, I A. All right.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Without saying the guy's name.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. So we just called it 10 schools. So our designations were the team leader was 10 and. And the. What they called the assistant team leader, which basically the radio operator was the one one.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And. And then with the indige, it was 010203.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So you had everybody identified in the clear if you needed to talk about it. And, and a lot of times you did because people are getting shot or blown up or whatever, you know, and they needed to know who that was.

[Brent Tucker]

So was 10 school conducted in Vietnam?

[Jim Day]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

And did you do real world missions in one zero school?

[Jim Day]

We did two missions in one zero school.

[Brent Tucker]

Were they like graduating missions of sorts were like. Or like practical exercises. That's a weird way to.

[Jim Day]

We were in the jungle with guns. Okay.

[Nate]

I mean, most SF guys were doing before they would go even to the A camps would do a little bit of that. Right. Where they would. Yeah, the jungle.

[Jim Day]

And yeah, that, that was, that was.

[Nate]

Kind of do a real, real world training exercises.

[Jim Day]

Yes. The, the SOG guys didn't go and do that, but everybody else did.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And then the SOG guys would. Instead of doing that, and I forget what they call it because I have chemo brain now from my chemotherapy and it screws your memory up. But I can tell you the island they went to and all that stuff. But that, that Senator Kerry, not the one that I don't particularly care for, but. But the one that was governor of Nebraska. Okay. He won the Medal of Honor on that same island.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, wow.

[Jim Day]

So. So yeah, the missions were real.

[Brent Tucker]

Is. Is that similar? I'm sorry, I just know enough to be dangerous. So I don't, I don't. I don't pretend to know more than.

[Jim Day]

I do that much.

[Brent Tucker]

Is that similar, the same thing or, or similar to a condo school? Because I've seen, you know, document documentaries on recondo school where their final exercise, Recondo school, was a real world mission as well. Similarities, but, but very different.

[Jim Day]

I don't know what they did in Ricardo School. Okay. Because I never went to ricondo school because basically what they were doing is they were training the LARPs.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

But it was done in a different area. Yeah, you know that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Recondo school was in the train.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Which is in two core.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. So you're.

[Brent Tucker]

So that, so that answers a question that your first real mission was actually in, in school. It's so weird to even say that. But, you know, and even that's, you know, technically correct, but your first, you know, standalone part of the unit, you know, it's, it's, it's. Well, it was real then.

[Jim Day]

I don't know.

[Brent Tucker]

I don't go away, but I get you saying your first real mission was a cross border mission.

[Jim Day]

That's the ones we counted.

[Brent Tucker]

You're right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. You know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

I mean that, that was our job.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. You know, how did you insert? Was it helicopter? Helicopter. Helicopter landing, obviously.

[Jim Day]

The. And, and I, I am going to borrow someone else's story. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

This is, this is a pilot from the 195th Assault Helicopter Company. And, and they up at Fort Rucker, they, they had a memorial dedicated a number of years ago and I was invited to that and I went to that. So this pilot was telling the story. Now the pilot was not a regular everyday guy. He, he did some sort of administrative thing and then he would fill in when somebody needed, you know, okay, go for whatever reason.

[Brent Tucker]

Stand in pilot.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So he, he was talking about, he said, so we're going out and we're going to insert a team. And he said, so the aircraft commander said, your job when we insert this team and your only job is to watch the front of that rotor and make sure that I don't hit trees. He said, now don't worry about the sides and don't worry about the back. That's what the crew is for. They'll watch the tail rotor and that's.

[Brent Tucker]

How tight of a spot they're, they're.

[Jim Day]

Putting that thing in. So you do nothing but watch the front of that rotor until we're out of that lz. And he said, and so when we hit the ground and the team jumps off, he said, I had to look. He said, I looked up and I could not see the sky.

[Nate]

Oh my God.

[Jim Day]

That's what size LZS we were going into. That's so crazy because Most of the LZs had watchers, right?

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

You know, and Jim, can you, I mean, can you talk a little bit about that? How often A lot of you guys would be inserted basically immediately under fire. The second your helicopter touches down, you're being tracked.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. So first, first of all, the, the targets were numbered numerically. Like Tango 51 was a bad target. Sierra 71 was a bad target. Golf 80 was a bad target. Those last two were down in the Fishh area, which is like 40 miles west of Saigon. Okay, so real close. And there was about 40 to 50,000 other guys there, you know, so. So they basically had all the LZs covered. Yeah, you know, so John Morley and I, and, and John was living in Orlando, by the way. He's gone now, but one of my favorite people in the world, him and I are going into Golf 80. Now those three that I named had a reputation. If you go there, somebody's gonna get shot, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

So, so we went into Golf 80 and, and we start off the LZ and we immediately spot guys. So we call up the helicopter, they come and get us, you know, so we get, we get back to the launch site and they say, okay, we're going to put you into your alternate lz. So we are inserted in our alternate lz. We start off the head for the jungle, we spot people, you know, and we're a six man team. Yeah. In the area where there's 40 to 50,000 bad guys. So we call for an extraction. We get an extraction. So they say, okay, we're going to send, send you to your third the same day. You know, they want you in there. We're curious about what's going on there and you're going to tell us. Well, two of us, we figured it out already.

[Nate]

They're here.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. And there's a lot of them.

[Brent Tucker]

And that was just. You already said it, but I just want to reiterate the. And that was. Your primary, was reconnaissance. You guys were trying to figure out who was there, how many, where.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, we tapped phone lines, we took photographs.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

You know, just reconnaissance.

[Nate]

Yeah, but actual special reconnaissance.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, put the special reconnaissance on that one.

[Jim Day]

Guys, there was a special in there. Okay, so the third LZ we go now, John told the point man before we go in, he said, the first guy you see, you know, give him the good news.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah, we're here.

[Jim Day]

So. Yeah. So we start off the lz and here comes a freaking platoon. Oh, my God, you know, there's six of us, right? So the point man fires.

[Nate]

Oh, no.

[Jim Day]

Magazine into the first guy he saw. Well, that freaks out the guys behind him, you know. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, I'M carrying the radio. So we. We run back to the LZ and I'm calling for an extraction. You know, we're under fire and. And I look around and all four in ditch have me surrounded, giving me instructions. Call helicopter. Call helicopter. I'm doing that. The John's over there, about 50 yards. You know, go help him. He's in a real fight.

[Brent Tucker]

Did you guys have, like emergency casts or. Because it was. Cross border. Yes.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Were you able to. To call in fighters to get people.

[Jim Day]

Off or in Cambodia? Yeah, it was just that.

[Brent Tucker]

It was just no support.

[Jim Day]

I mean, we had. We had four Selects and four gunships, you know, so. But that was it.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Now you. You cross that border into Laos, and they had everything.

[Brent Tucker]

Why was it different? You say. She's saying Cambodia, no support. Layo support.

[Jim Day]

I was told that the ambassador gets to decide whether you have that support or not.

[Brent Tucker]

I can tell you where my next mission was going to be.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Ambassadors at the time, were US Troops not allowed in both Cambodia and Laos? Or, or, or were they allowed in Laos and that's why there was a little bit more freedom?

[Jim Day]

No, no, we weren't supposed to be in either.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

That. That was why it was top secret.

[Nate]

Yeah. Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Jim, the. Someone asked me this question, and I realized, man, that's something. Yeah. I can remember that night so vividly. Do you talk about your. The. Your first real world mission that you're going into Cambodia? Do you remember your emotions, how you felt that night? Getting ready. Getting ready to go for the first time after all this training and even some practice missions like this. This one's for real, right?

[Jim Day]

No, I don't remember that.

[Brent Tucker]

Really.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You're a, you know, smooth operator.

[Jim Day]

I don't remember the night before. I remember the mission.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

I mean, because that was intense, but, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And I can. Well, because I was nervous. Yeah, I was nervous. You know, I'm like, hey, this is like, we're so. That's what makes it so vivid to me.

[Jim Day]

I was telling Nate and some of the other guys earlier, you know, the guys that were the regular team guys. I was the third American because I was being trained to take place of one of the other guys.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. I mean, that was our procedure.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Would they call you one three, then one two, one two, a one zero, one one and then. Okay, the one two. Yeah, yeah. The.

[Jim Day]

We got off the helicopter at first light, and we stopped walking at first light.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

We were 25 miles out of our target area because they were going to do something stupid because one of the guys, this was his last mission and they wanted a big.

[Nate]

Seems like the missions were big enough that you didn't need to force them.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, but everybody was doing those. I mean, right in our group, everybody was doing those. They wanted something spectacular. Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Do you know roughly, I mean, you're there 19 months. I don't know if, if you could, maybe someone's tracking it for you. How many missions that, that you ended up doing?

[Jim Day]

I think I did 23 total.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Nate]

Cross. Cross border operation.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, Cross border operations. Yeah, yeah. I mean we, we would run missions around Bami to it and stuff, you know, but that was mostly listening posts and stuff like that. You know how.

[Brent Tucker]

And I know that it would. Different missions. This, this time can change and sometimes the mission will shorten it. But traditionally, how long would you guys stay out into the field? Let's say, let's say you were there for the whole duration. Nothing brought you home early. You didn't have to hit three LZs in one night.

[Jim Day]

Our missions typically were five to seven days.

[Nate]

Oh my God.

[Brent Tucker]

As a. That's a long time. The no resupply. Everything you brought in is what you brought in on your back for five to seven.

[Jim Day]

Well, sometimes it would change. For instance, we had a team that was in contact and they, they were running and they couldn't extract them.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So those of us not on that mission, we're, we're sitting back there in recon company and we're loading magazines.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

You know, and the helicopter fly over and drop them, you know, and these guys will pick them up as they run by.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. We call them speed balls. You couldn't tell them the same thing back then or just.

[Jim Day]

Okay, I don't even remember what we called.

[Brent Tucker]

I mean the guy on the ground called it a godsend.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, thank you for the bullets. You know, and we had 20 round magazines back in there.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. Oh yeah, that's right. They didn't, they didn't do like the, the curve to it. They had those straight angle box magazine.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah. But some of the guys bought their own money. You know, back, back in the States they'd buy a 30 round magazine, but you'd only have one if you did that.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Nate]

I think it'd be interesting to talk about what, what did your loadout look like? What type of rifle did you carry? What were you carrying on you? How much food, water, bullets, medical gear, radios.

[Jim Day]

We were supposed to carry foreign weapons or antique weapons.

[Nate]

Okay, that makes Sense.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Nate]

Because you're wearing nonstandard uniforms. No identifiers, no American flags. None of that.

[Jim Day]

None of that. No.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

No. It. You know, if. If we ended up out there laying on the ground.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

There's nothing to identify where we come from.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Tyler]

You know, I have a question.

[Brent Tucker]

Wouldn't accept your brown eyes. Were.

[Tyler]

They would. Where you get. Were people that, you know were killed, were they given proper military services and burials, or was it just.

[Jim Day]

That's a good question.

[Nate]

Until 30 years later. Right.

[Jim Day]

If we got them back, you know, I mean, there. There's a lot of guys are still there. A lot of guys.

[Brent Tucker]

A lot of them where they just get the mia, even though they know what happened to them, but they just get the MIA nomenclature because the military would.

[Jim Day]

Would classify them kia.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Not recovered.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

At some point.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Because otherwise they have to keep paying the.

[Tyler]

That's a harsh truth.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Brent Tucker]

My gosh. Yeah. So would you have any foreign, like sniper weapons? Would you have those as. As a reconnaissance guy? We'd always carry some sort of long guns, but. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you have any long guns?

[Jim Day]

See John sitting over there?

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Jim Day]

That was a long.

[Brent Tucker]

That's a long ways away. Yeah. How about night vision? Do you have the starlight?

[Jim Day]

Yes, we did. It was like this. And not many people carried one.

[Brent Tucker]

Was. It was. It was. It was so big and heavy and just not good.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, we were carrying a ton anyway because like I said, we. We didn't get resupplied. So, you know, what we had in our rock was what we had.

[Nate]

Yeah. You know, so you guys are probably carrying a lot more than a standard A team would.

[Jim Day]

Oh, absolutely.

[Nate]

Okay. You're carrying more probably what me and Brent were carrying when we were operating. Well, maybe not Brent and Delta, but as Green Berets. Yeah. You got to carry. Going to carry everything that you need when you're in the operation.

[Jim Day]

I carried typically 33. 20 round magazines.

[Nate]

30. 20 round magazines.

[Brent Tucker]

33.

[Nate]

I carried 12. And that was a lot, I thought.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, 12.

[Jim Day]

But. Yeah, but. Yeah, but you're not out there for five to seven days. Yeah. Fighting a war.

[Brent Tucker]

How many of them would be on your body and your rucksack?

[Jim Day]

What I would do is I would take four canteen pouches, which will hold eight magazines a piece. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, okay. Okay. There's 30 weapon.

[Nate]

Oh, my God. Whoa.

[Jim Day]

So 32 on the belt.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Now sometimes I was made fun of because I carried so many.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So that wasn't.

[Brent Tucker]

That wasn't. That would even that would be considered a heavy loadout.

[Jim Day]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, but just speak a little more into the mic, a little bit forward.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Some of the guys like the bar belt.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

That was six pouches, four magazines apiece for each pouch. So that makes 25.

[Nate]

Still so many. Compared to what?

[Jim Day]

But, yeah, but, yeah, but what? I would tell people when they made fun of me. I said, now, when the shooting starts.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Don't ask me for my masks.

[Jim Day]

You gotta say sorry first before I give you with.

[Brent Tucker]

With 30.

[Jim Day]

I know. I never ran out.

[Brent Tucker]

That was my question. That was my next question.

[Nate]

Oh, my God.

[Jim Day]

Never ran out.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's so crazy.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Did.

[Brent Tucker]

Was there ever a time you had to stay out longer than. What'd you say? Five to.

[Jim Day]

Five to seven days?

[Brent Tucker]

Did you ever have to stay out longer than seven?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, they actually had a long one, 10 to 12 day missions also.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

But I never ran one of those. And to be quite honest, almost no missions lasted the whole time.

[Nate]

Is that because of getting into contact? Yes, that's what I was going to ask next was how often did you guys get into contact? Every time.

[Jim Day]

Well, you know that first mission we were talking about?

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Where. Where we were 25 miles out of our target area.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And we walk from first light to first light about 30 minutes later.

[Nate]

So start of that 30 minutes into that first mission.

[Jim Day]

No, 30 minutes after we. After we walked all night.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Now. Yeah. You're. You're familiar. I know John's familiar. A lot of the areas we're in, and that was one of them. Look like eastern Oregon.

[Brent Tucker]

Really?

[Jim Day]

After they harvest the wheat. Really, you know.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Double like this.

[Nate]

Yeah. So not jungle. Big open swaths of fields.

[Jim Day]

Sometimes I call. I call those places the wasteland.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Because there's no place to hide.

[Nate]

Well, and John, I. I'm pretty sure it was you that told me this story years back. For those who didn't know, I mean, John. I've known John since before I was in the military. So we go back a long way, obviously through my dad. But the story you had told about, maybe it was you had gone to go in to retrieve him, but one of the. One of the guys who. They hit the ground, they immediately took casualties, and he was the only one left. And he got basically stuck low, crawling through a field while they were burning the field down.

[Jim Day]

Oh, yeah.

[Nate]

Can you tell that story? Because that's maybe the craziest story I've ever heard.

[Jim Day]

Okay. All right. And. And that guy that's crawling through the ashes, that was My best friend.

[Nate]

Okay, yeah, let's tell that. That story. I still hold on to that story.

[Jim Day]

And unfortunately he's gone now too.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. But that was Brian Stockdale.

[Nate]

Ah, that's right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. And, and, and Steve went with me when we scattered his ashes. Okay, yeah, but so that, that was R.T. hammer. And, and the 1 0. The team leader was Bill Crosky. He was a lieutenant. He had come to us from one of the LURP units. Very aggressive. And the thing is, we weren't supposed to be aggressive. We were supposed to hide. We were supposed to be out there five to seven days, like I said, tapping phone lines and taking photographs and, and, you know, and observing, observing troop movements, you know, but so they go in at last light. Now. Now John Morley and I RT rule. We were going in first thing in the morning. Okay. So like 3:00 in the morning, they, they come, wake us up and say, okay, RT Hammer has been wiped out. We need you, you to go in and get the bodies. We call that a bright light team body retrieval. So crazy. So anyway, I, John and I with our team are up in the helicopter. I'm carrying a Swedish K because we're supposed to carry foreign weapons and stuff, you know, and that was the last time I did that. I wanted something with some punch.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, but we're up there and, and we can see the, the people following those trails he left through the ashes.

[Nate]

Why don't you tell them about the, the spot Brian's in, like with him. With him, basically trying to evade the Viet Cong.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and the, and they weren't Viet Cong, they were North Vietnamese Army.

[Nate]

Okay, there you go.

[Jim Day]

Distinction.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. North Vietnamese army was much better war wise than.

[Nate]

So the NVA were after him.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And they're, and they're out there going, gi, we know where you are. Come out.

[Nate]

And he's. And he's like low crawling through fields. Is there flame throwing it down? Look for him? Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Burning it.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And they've already. And they've killed the rest of his team. It's just him.

[Jim Day]

Well, actually, what happened in that Crosby had gone forward because, because one of the team said they spotted some guys coming in and, and if not our primary mission, our secondary mission was always to catch a prisoner.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Now the problem is you got a six man team, you know.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And you got a guy with a gun that doesn't want to be caught, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

So it was difficult. But anyway, so, so Krosky had gone to look at the trail where the, where the team member had said that he had seen somebody. Well, there was. He found three guys.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And he shoots two of them, you know, and then says, LA Day, vc, You know.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

La day means come here. And the guy disagreed. You already shot my. Yeah, and we laugh about it, but. Right. Unfortunately, Bill was killed, you know, in this operation. Just. Then just use those two guys.

[Nate]

He was shot.

[Jim Day]

Yes.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. And so anyway, Stock, Stockdale, well, the point man that was with Krosky comes back to the team and says, you know, Dai, we. Lieutenant Finney, you know, so Stockdale goes up to check this out, you know, about 50 yards away in the jungle, you know, and so he goes up there and he gets almost close enough to touch him. Almost. But we're under heavy fire now because other guys have showed up.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

You know, so now this is, this is his first mission on this team. Okay. So the team didn't know him. They were Nungs, by the way, Chinese. And so he says, we'll go this way. And they go, no, we'll go this way. And then it opens up again and everybody hits the ground. And they went one way and he went another.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, those, those four nuns were picked up later.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, okay, much by. By us or by the. Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. If they've been picked up by somebody else, we wouldn't have known. But. Yeah, but so anyway, Brian's out there crawling around all night. He's. He's rubbing the ashes on us, you.

[Brent Tucker]

Know, trying to blend in.

[Jim Day]

And so there's one tree, one big ass tree, you know, and he is, you know, you know how those roots, you know, so he's, he's in amongst the roots and, and he's on the radio and he's going, you know, you guys have to be here at first light.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, at first light they'll be able to see exactly where I am. You have to be here first light. And so we go out there and they, they drop a Maguire rig for him. This was before stable rigs, which were much better.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Maguire rig is just a 2 inch strap on the end of a rope. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And that in that predicament, I'll take it.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, everybody did.

[Nate]

How did, with, I mean, obviously with all the, the NBA looking for him at the time, did they come in with, with, did you guys come in with air superiority to clear the area out?

[Jim Day]

So you, we had those ships I, I talked about. And John and I are sitting there and in one of the slicks and we're watching the gunships chase these guys, you know.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And I'm sitting here with my Swedish K. You know, if I make it out of here, I'm not doing that again.

[Brent Tucker]

Right?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah. But we were up there about. For three hours, and then the. The alo. The assistant launch officer decided that, you know, if we send these guys in, then we're just going to have to get somebody else to go get them.

[Nate]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

I mean, because they were everywhere.

[Nate]

Distracted him straight out of the roots, out of the tree.

[Jim Day]

They. They pulled him through the freaking tree, which he did not complain about. It ripped part of his uniform off. It ripped the handset off the radio, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. You know, hey, I'm signed for that.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

It's so crazy. So the. I'm asked this question a little facetiously, but, you know, it seemed like. I mean, at the end of the day, it's a little more, you know, intricate than this. But if you're there to, you know, find out where they are, report, you know, I would be like, all right, I don't have to go. What do you want to know? We want to know where they are. We'll point somewhere in Cambodia. Yeah, they're there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're there. I mean, so what? I mean by that. So they're everywhere. So at what point did you ever think, like, hey, like, why are we doing these missions? Or the things you did accomplish it because it was risky, you know, was.

[Jim Day]

It worth the risky there? And everybody knew that because people kept getting killed, you know, or wounded really bad. But no, I never. I never thought that I, you know, this is my job. This is what I do, you know, And I told Nate back before he went to Afghanistan, you know, I said, here. Here's the way it worked for me. I said, the first firefight, which was that mission we were talking about earlier, you know, those guys were so close, you could actually reach out and touch them. Oh, man.

[Tyler]

You know, I couldn't imagine.

[Brent Tucker]

Never been in that.

[Nate]

I had one time for me and.

[Jim Day]

But I. I told him, and that.

[Nate]

Was rare for most Green Berets have never been that close.

[Jim Day]

I told Nate, I said, the. Your first. Your first contact is just. Everything is going super fast.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. You know, agree with that.

[Jim Day]

I said, but after the first one.

[Nate]

It all slows down.

[Jim Day]

It all slows down.

[Nate]

Yeah, that's true.

[Jim Day]

So just get through the first one.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, and then it's.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, but for you guys, getting through the first ones.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Jv team for life.

[Nate]

Revenge is an act of passion. Vengeance is an act of justice. Injuries are revenged. Crimes are avenged. Almost a century ago, big pharmaceutical companies re engineered medical school curriculum and faculty with one goal.

[Jim Day]

Putting profit before progress.

[Nate]

Anyone pushing back against the medical matrix they carefully crafted was threatened, silenced, censored, financially ruined, or worse. They are the problem. We are the solution.

[Jim Day]

Alpha, you're clear to engage with weapons. You're clear to engage with weapons.

[Tyler]

And of course we got to give a shout out to our boys in 09 holsters. Custom built ruggedized duty gear. Made in the USA for cops by cops, a Leo and veteran owned small business. They do an upgraded solutions for duty gear including cases for portable radios, body cameras, tourniquets, and pretty much everything you need to carry on duty. So go to 09holsters com and use promo code antihero10zulu9. That's antihero10z9 and get yourself 10% off your order.

[Jim Day]

JV team for life.

[Nate]

Now didn't MACV sock had close to 80% casualty rate? Didn't you?

[Jim Day]

I don't know what the casualty rate was very high. They're actually checking on that now because there, there is a group out there and I started it, but I got sick. But there's a group out there trying to get MAGV SOG a Congressional Gold Medal.

[Nate]

Okay, well they should definitely.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah. Tell me where to sign up for, for that petition to make sure that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Brent Tucker]

The.

[Jim Day]

Okay, so, but who, who Always in.

[Brent Tucker]

Mac VSOG were SEALs a part of as well? Was it only a Green Beret mission? Primarily Greenbrush. Who made up Mac V SOG Mag.

[Jim Day]

V Shock covered all, all the, the branches.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

You know, but they did different things. Yeah, they did different things.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. For instance, the Navy. Are you guys familiar with the Gulf of Tonkin? Yes, I am. Okay. Yeah, that was the Navy. That was SOG. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

All right. So I don't think the SEALs ever ran any cross border operations. I don't, but I don't know.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

You know, but, and, and I know some of the Marines were, were aviators.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, that were with Mac V.

[Brent Tucker]

Sog, but the Cambodia specific cross border was run by the Green Berets.

[Jim Day]

As far as I know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, as far as you know.

[Jim Day]

I mean I, I didn't see any other white guys out there.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, fair assessment.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nate]

In Cambodia you were the only ones.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Were were you wounded and in your time during cross border operations?

[Jim Day]

Well, I do not have a Purple Heart.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. When I was working for the north launch site in S2 Operations and Intelligence as an intelligence park, we. Well, I'm sitting there at lunch tonight, headquarters in Camp Torres, our main camp, and some guys come in and said we're going to be taking some supplies up to Duco, which was one of the A team sites where we launched out of.

[Nate]

Oh, you guys launched out of a.

[Jim Day]

Camp sometimes, most of the time.

[Nate]

Oh, I didn't know that.

[Jim Day]

Except down south we, we pretty much launched out of Quan Loy, which was like 1st Cav 11th ACR. It was a big place. Okay, okay. But before, before that, the mission I was talking about was Stockdale. We actually launched out of an eight camp.

[Nate]

Okay, Okay.

[Jim Day]

I think it was Dow Tien, but I can't remember. You know, we launched out of a number of them, but now I lost.

[Nate]

My train of thought. Injured were you?

[Jim Day]

So, so they, they come by the, the launch headquarters and I think it was the major that was running the operation was looking for experienced guys because all the guys that they had from the company, that exploitation company is going to go up there, they were pretty new, you know, and exploitation companies didn't get in a lot of combat anyway. Not, not like the recon guys did. So they were, look, they were looking for guys, you know, that been there and done that. So we went up there and then the young guys, they just sort of late in the day, they, they wanted to get back to Bammy to it, you know. So that's where the club was.

[Nate]

Nothing's changed.

[Jim Day]

So they talked the major into heading back late. So it got dark. Okay. On the way back, the convoy got ambushed and a rocket RPG hit right in front of the passenger seat in a deuce and a half.

[Nate]

Oh, wow.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Well, there's an endage sitting there, so we just keep going until we, we run into a roadblock. And so I asked the major if we could take one of the vehicles back down there because that Dewson AV, of course, run off the road, it had 30 some guys on it, you know, mostly Indige. One or two Americans. He won't let me take a truck back down there. But so I, I grabbed. I think, I think it was two squads, but it may have been just one. And we, we hiked back down to where the ambush site was.

[Brent Tucker]

That major is just gonna leave the few Americans in indige to fend for themselves until morning.

[Nate]

God.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Oh, by the way, he got court martial the next day and good for you.

[Brent Tucker]

Good, good on you.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, but, but he won.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

He played paper, rock, rank.

[Nate]

And so you guys walked back down there.

[Jim Day]

We walked back down there. And so the deucenet sitting there, you know, now the, the indigenous, two Americans, they had formed a defensive perimeter.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

But here's this guy. There was, there was one indigenous in the road that was dead. And then there was this guy. And I'm trying to get him out of the truck, you know, and see that.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

That the dash had blown into like this.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Jim Day]

And so I'm trying to pull him out and I cut my damn hand. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

No good deed goes on punishment.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Because I didn't really know that he was pinned in there.

[Brent Tucker]

But how was link up for that? Because you're at night, they're at night, they're on high alert. They have set their perimeter. We're able to get them on the radio. Was there a radio they were monitoring or is it just, hey, hopefully we see them before they shoot us? I've actually been on that before, actually.

[Nate]

The most dangerous and the Q course.

[Brent Tucker]

They'Ll tell you the most dangerous operation is friendly link up. And I thought that was a silly thing to say until I was doing it one night and I thought a similar situation. A unit in Afghanistan had got essentially overrun. They had a lot of guys killed. We couldn't get them on the radio. We were supposed to link up with them to extract them. And it was, it was a conventional force and I'm the echo and I could not get these guys on the radio and we're just patrolling in the middle of the night to link up with them. And I was point man and I was just waiting to get, to get shot because I knew we were closer and closer and closer.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, well, you know, stuff happens, right?

[Brent Tucker]

It does. Yeah. And it does. It's a simple answer, but it's. But that's, that is the answer for you guys.

[Nate]

I feel like that, you know, a lot of, a lot of what we learn in the Q course comes straight from Vietnam. Like most of the tactics and the link up procedures. Imagine you guys were doing a lot more of that than we were.

[Jim Day]

Right. Well, I know a lot of the SOG guys taught. You know, it was still a training group when I, when I got out, but later, the Q course, I mean, same thing.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, the, you had mentioned this a little. I'd written it down right before you kind of said it, so it was a great time to segue into it. Did you. Do you have some, some fun stories of sorts? Yeah. Like, were you able to have fun during the downtown. Yeah. If it wasn't. If it wasn't mission time, you know, Were you able to have fun? You know, do you have any fun stories? I went to costume parties in Afghanistan when I was. We were in caf. For a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I. I had some good times in. In combat. We're able to go out, see some things, kick back, have to.

[Nate]

Did you guys get R and R to Bangkok like my dad and the other A camp guys were getting?

[Brent Tucker]

Well, who authorized that?

[Nate]

Yeah, well, they had to. They had to go get. They had to resupply, right?

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, you gotta resupply.

[Jim Day]

They were in Thailand anyway, you know, but.

[Nate]

So he was having fun while you were in the. So the. Dad's gonna watch this. So. You hear that, dad? That's what. That's what Jim's got to say.

[Jim Day]

You know, it's really funny though. You know, Brett wrote down 19 months in Vietnam.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, almost everybody extended.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

You know, voluntarily.

[Jim Day]

So. Yeah, we were. We were doing okay. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Okay.

[Nate]

Well, I mean, Jim, we. You know, Riley. What? Riley do 60 months. 60 months in what, like 70? Out of 70?

[Jim Day]

Maybe.

[Nate]

Well, because it was almost straight.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Right.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Riley lot.

[Jim Day]

Special Forces hall of fame because of his dad.

[Nate]

So he was the. The Mike Force ncoic, right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. He. Riley went to Vietnam as a medic spec four. Okay. In 1964.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. He came back in 1970 as a sergeant first class. Yeah, he. He did get shipped home once. He had. He had a dispute with an officer.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

I love him already.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. And. Yeah. Great guy.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Which Nate can tell you. Yep. But, yeah, he got. He got into the dispute, the officer sent him back, said, you'll never come back.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And so Riley kept in touch with his guys, and just soon as that.

[Nate]

Officer was gone, I mean, he's back, Brent, for us. You know, you think about that. That would be. That would be like somebody being in Afghanistan from 2013 to 2020. Just in Afghanistan, but also, he. He wasn't. He was also with the indige.

[Jim Day]

Right.

[Nate]

For almost those full six years. Just like, living. Oh, you know.

[Jim Day]

Well, absolutely. I mean, not.

[Nate]

Not just like at. You know, in Bangkok or at the camps. Like, he's actually out there living with the ended for almost six years.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Six years.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

He's.

[Brent Tucker]

He's gone.

[Jim Day]

He's.

[Brent Tucker]

He's gone savage. They made a movie about him. Apocalypse.

[Jim Day]

Right. Yeah. You know, Riley spent nine years in the army. Okay. Nine years and six.

[Nate]

Seven of it in Vietnam almost.

[Jim Day]

Well on and off. Yeah, But. But you know why he got out of the Army?

[Nate]

Because the war ended, I imagine.

[Jim Day]

Because the war ended. That's right.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Now he spent six months on an A team in four core. Okay. And just. And they were doing six month tours back then.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Just soon as that ended, he went. He went to the four core Mike Force and that was home.

[Nate]

And Jim, could you maybe explain to the viewers what Mike Force is? It's a little bit less known than things like Matt vsog, but obviously there's some. There's some crossover between the.

[Jim Day]

Well, yeah, you know, I have mentioned the Special Operations Association. Both Mac VSOC and the Mike Force qualify.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

Matter of fact, you. You guys qualify now too.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Because they looked into, you know, you guys know, Special Forces changed.

[Nate]

You know, it's a. Jim, maybe some. I love this story about the Special Forces association or Special Operations. Special Operations Association.

[Jim Day]

Either one. I remember.

[Nate]

And I love this story because macv SOG and MIKE Force are allowed in. Plus the global war on terror. Green Berets. But not. My dad's a camp Green Beret.

[Jim Day]

That is correct.

[Nate]

And it's. So. Yeah. So why don't you tell about like how that kind of a little bit of a spiteful relationship, how that turned out.

[Jim Day]

Here's the story I heard. And I wasn't involved. Here's the story I heard. Okay. So you know, the war winds down, everybody comes home, you know, and Special Forces Association.

[Nate]

Yep.

[Jim Day]

A lot of the guys said you saw guys aren't real Special Forces because you weren't on an A team.

[Nate]

The sfa.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Wouldn't let the Mac we saw guys in.

[Jim Day]

Well, they did let them in eventually.

[Nate]

I mean, before it was declassified. They didn't know what you guys were doing.

[Jim Day]

We caught a bunch. But they knew.

[Nate]

They knew.

[Jim Day]

Well, sure. They knew.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Was.

[Tyler]

It was a little bit of like maybe jealousy.

[Nate]

So didn't you guys. You guys started your own group.

[Jim Day]

That is correct.

[Nate]

We're gonna start our own badge. That's right. And you're not allowed in.

[Jim Day]

That's right. And then 20 some years later when the press starts getting hold of what we did.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And we're getting all the glory and they're not, you know, they want in.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

And they're the old guys, which I am one of them old guys. But I, I think they should be allowed in. But. And I have mentioned that before now. I was on the board of directors for a while too, and, and I tried, you know, that's funny. But some of those Guys still pissed off?

[Tyler]

No, I get it.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, I was trying to find it real quick, but my hometown of Sanford, Florida, I believe, was the first. If not, he was definitely one of the first Green Berets to die in Vietnam.

[Nate]

Oh.

[Brent Tucker]

While it was still a conflict. And what he was doing at the time, he was in an airplane just kind of doing C2 as an advisor, and their airplane had a malfunction and he died in an airplane. And I was trying to find his. He's trying to find his. Find his name.

[Nate]

Well, when did. When did. When did. When were Americans officially or. I mean, unofficially?

[Brent Tucker]

55. Go ahead.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Yeah. I think the first American killed in Vietnam by the Communists was in 44. Wow. Holy. Okay.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

But now that. That doesn't qualify him for the wall, though.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay, okay.

[Jim Day]

All right. That. That was in the 60s when they started, you know, that list.

[Nate]

I mean, that was World War II.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, I said, like, it was a good 1944.

[Tyler]

That's what I was thinking.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

Okay. So Jack Singh. Love, Major General. When he retired, when. When Carter fired him. Seriously?

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

He was in charge of the troops in. In Korea. And him and the President did not get along about the way that should be run.

[Nate]

Yeah, well, I mean, President Carter wasn't a big fan of us to begin with.

[Jim Day]

Well, he was Navy.

[Brent Tucker]

Some people would argue he should have been fired as well.

[Jim Day]

Well. But some people would.

[Brent Tucker]

The. You said. So macv. SOG was doing cross border operations and. Cambodia.

[Nate]

Laos.

[Brent Tucker]

Laos. Laos or Laos.

[Jim Day]

Go.

[Brent Tucker]

There was. Was there any other countries that we were doing cross border operations into?

[Jim Day]

According to legend, there's five guys missing in China.

[Nate]

Get out of here.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Oh, we got.

[Nate]

Yeah, I did not know that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Some missing in the DMZ and I think some missing in North Vietnam, too.

[Nate]

I mean. Yeah. Like you. North Korea. You guys, would that have been.

[Jim Day]

That wasn't sog.

[Nate]

That wasn't so.

[Jim Day]

No. But that same sort of idea.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

But different unit. So. Was basically based out of Vietnam. But you know, what I. What I think is funny is, you know, we all wore the same uniform, the A Team guys and us.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

With one difference. Okay. This little pocket patch.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

They had the Civilian Irregular Defense Group patch, which was green.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And we had the Special Commando Unit patch, which was red.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So when we'd go to NHA Trang, we had a bullseye.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. They noticed that. They picked up. They knew what that meant. Yeah, for sure.

[Jim Day]

Because we weren't in their chain of command. We were the fifth group Flash. We were the patch.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, but we were that special commando unit patch too.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, which is what the indigenous were on there.

[Nate]

Right. We still wear it. We still wear it today.

[Jim Day]

Oh, I know. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I got. I got another question for you. That do of. Of your missions, is there one that stands out to you like that? However you want to qualify it. Yeah. I want to put like that was a good mission. That was. That was a worthwhile mission. That was the mission. I signed up for that you come home, kind of always have at least one of those where you come back just feeling good about being a Green Beret.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. You know, I can't think of anything that was different. You know, sometimes you got in firefight, sometimes you didn't. You know, all this stuff. You know, but there. There was one mission that stands out for me. Okay. And we didn't get in a firefight.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. But we're out there. We're. We're tapping phone lines and we're doing a trail watch.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Nate]

Now is this phone lines, as we would think of it, with big wooden telephone lines or like, how. How would that work?

[Jim Day]

They ran up. They ran them along the ground.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And. And we used the same tape recorders that Nixon used in the White House to record his. Because it was. It was voice activated.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, so I didn't even know.

[Nate]

You guys were doing that.

[Jim Day]

Oh, yeah.

[Nate]

Tapping phone lines.

[Jim Day]

So. Yeah. And. And what. What the NVA would do is they would just have a stick with a hoop on the end of it and they would just have a guy run.

[Brent Tucker]

Down that and rip off anything you put on there.

[Jim Day]

Well, no, what they're looking. Yes. It would rip it off.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

But what they're looking for is where those guys are.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. That was more important than.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay. I'm sorry. I just realized. I just realized this and. And I should have realized this earlier when you were tapping phone lines. It's real time. You're tapping them right now. It's not like a stay behind device or something. You're listening to it right now. Now.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

And however long you can sit there and listen to it is what. Is what you get.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Oh, my gosh. So they're.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Nate]

So they know.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

They're somewhere close.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

So you're on limited time.

[Jim Day]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

How far away could you. You know that then?

[Jim Day]

Sure.

[Brent Tucker]

That wire can only go so long. And here. How. So how far away are you usually from. Well, telephone.

[Jim Day]

You know, the the wire was small, so we just carry a spool, you know, going.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And we'd get out of sight.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

We wanted to be close enough to see them because.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

You're not going to know if that guy.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Jim Day]

But he will know.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Jim Day]

Oh, man.

[Brent Tucker]

That's the. But keep going about that Was. Was one where. I don't. I don't mean to say in this aspect where. Because you did your job right, because you. In that environment, you can do everything right and still get into it. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong. Yeah, but, you know, But. But you. But again, it definitely helps when you do everything.

[Nate]

Hey.

[Brent Tucker]

Hey. Sometimes just lucky.

[Jim Day]

That mission stands out for me for a couple of reasons, which is not what you're asking. And I just followed some water.

[Nate]

Oh, you're good.

[Jim Day]

Okay. 1. Hank Hennicks was the black guy in recon.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

He was on that mission. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

As in the. As in the only one like that at that point.

[Nate]

He was the one.

[Brent Tucker]

One of one.

[Jim Day]

The one.

[Nate]

Not much has changed, but, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

So he. He's pulling his shirt up and he's looking, and there's a lump on his. You know, and he doesn't know why. Well, as it turns out, it was a leech, and it was exactly the color of the skin.

[Nate]

Whoa.

[Jim Day]

You know, and when he finally figured it out, what we would do with leeches, just put the insect repellent on them.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Right up.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, you're gonna bleed for a while after that.

[Nate]

That. Okay, see, that's a great question. Here's something. Or I've got a. It just brings up in my head because, I mean, Afghanistan, Iraq's the desert. Sometimes you see a scorpion under nods. They're bio. You know, luminescent. That's cool. What? You're in the jungle. Tigers, snakes, bears. Oh, my. What. What was. Could you tell us.

[Brent Tucker]

Great question.

[Nate]

Especially where you guys are doing it. You're in the jungle.

[Jim Day]

We're in the jungle.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right. The only thing I can kill you.

[Nate]

What's kind of the craziest wildlife that you ever came across?

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's a good question.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Well, you know, I got to go home sometime.

[Brent Tucker]

Not if we can help it.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Tyler]

Brent just busted out another cigar.

[Jim Day]

So, you know, and. And you keep. You keep asking questions about, you know, good missions and, you know, what. What you think about this, and were you worried about that? And, you know, so I'm at. I'm at the south Launch site and my mission got canceled. And a guy we call Johnny Strange, his last name was Strange, first name was Walter. But you know, I don't know how you got.

[Tyler]

Johnny sounds way better.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but Johnny Strange, his one one got sick, okay. So they were gonna have to cancel his mission. I said, I'll go. You know, my mission is canceled. I'll go. So we, we go out there and the next morning the indigenous are all excited and they're trying to explain something to him. Now, you know, we didn't speak their language and yeah, they didn't speak our language, but we could get by with pigeon.

[Nate]

Did you have interpreters at all?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, okay, but.

[Nate]

Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. But they're trying to explain something to him that happened during the night. Okay. So they're, they're talking and, and I said, tiger.

[Nate]

Oh, God.

[Jim Day]

You know, well, they were trying to explain that a tiger had circled us.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

The night before, you know, a tiger. Yeah. But now check this out. They go, no sweat, tt tiger.

[Nate]

It's a little one, no big deal.

[Jim Day]

And there for a while, you know, you're, you're asking about what you thought. There for a while, I, I had these thoughts of, you know, waking up in the jaws of a tiger as he runs through the jungle.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Oh, gosh. So that was one time. So, so we're out there and, and there's monkeys in the trees.

[Nate]

Oh, yeah, I've heard.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Dad's telling me about this. Yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

And they did not like us.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And they would throw things at you and screech and yell, you know, and of course, we're trying to be clandestine. Shut up, monks. So we don't want that. That. Yeah. So we're, we have just stopped and, and the way we would when we stopped six man team, right. We were just circle speak a little.

[Brent Tucker]

Bit closer to the mic, Just, just make sure.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, we, we would circle a tree. We'd all lean up against a tree, but we make a circle around us so we can see in every direction.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. So we didn't want to excite the monkeys.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

So we're all sitting there for a long time, you know, and, and so here come, you know those pot belly pigs.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

They're native over there.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, they're wild, right?

[Jim Day]

So here they come, belly pigs. Yeah, yeah, they're. They're rooting around and stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

A damn boa constrictor reaches out from one of those bushes and grabs one of them.

[Nate]

One of the pigs, one of the Pigs. Oh, my God.

[Jim Day]

Now. Now we have some noise.

[Tyler]

Oh, yeah, right.

[Jim Day]

Because all the ones that didn't get grabbed, they're running off, squealing. Yeah, the one that did get grabbed, he ain't running off, but he's squealing.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, man. That's what? That was never my mission planning, analysis. Tigers, monkeys.

[Jim Day]

Check this out. Okay, so we're walking through the jungle. On this one mission, I stepped over three poisonous stakes.

[Nate]

Cobras.

[Jim Day]

No, not a cobra. I would not step over that. You know. You know cobras are like 18ft long.

[Nate]

Well, that's what I was gonna say. Dad told me a story about, you know, walking one of the trails and, you know, they're patrolling and there's a guy, point man in front of him, and he looks up and there's a head of a snake. Cobra over the top of his. Point man. Yeah, the point man.

[Tyler]

Oh, it's horrifying.

[Nate]

But yeah, yeah. You said 18ft long. They rear up.

[Tyler]

They stand up feet.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, they're big. So I wasn't on this.

[Nate]

Just trying to do your job.

[Tyler]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You guys are familiar with Randall knife knives?

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jim Day]

Custom made knives.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Which were very popular with special forces.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Jim Day]

Back in the day.

[Brent Tucker]

Don't want to make you jealous, but I got one for graduation.

[Nate]

Oh, yeah. You know what knife I got for graduation?

[Brent Tucker]

What's that?

[Nate]

Jim Day's Mac V SOG knife that he used in Vietnam. I didn't get a yar, bro. But I can tell you, thanks to Jim here, I got something way cooler.

[Brent Tucker]

Cool. Pretty cool.

[Nate]

It's. You know that that knife had a lot of questionable scrapes and red when I received it.

[Jim Day]

But I've always been a knife guy. I got a bunch of knives. I got one of them with me, don't I?

[Nate]

Yep. From one of our. Jim. Jim actually sponsored him and my dad sponsor ODA in Afghanistan. Got us all sorts of.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, that's bad.

[Nate]

Cool stuff. Got some badass benchmade knives for us.

[Brent Tucker]

Heck, yeah.

[Nate]

I ruined mine. I was telling Jim I ruined mine by cutting no. Bags of. Cupping open bags of opium. Not thinking about the fact that opium is the most disgusting thing ever and you can't get it off the smell.

[Brent Tucker]

I would not. I would not have thought that.

[Nate]

No. Yeah, well, it was super dumb of me. I tried to soak it in vinegar for days.

[Jim Day]

At least you didn't do that, SOG boy. Yeah, that's right.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, it's crazy. At gosh, the. Did you Guys, did you guys. Did you ever do any, like, stay behind devices? You guys do any of those, like, for trails or.

[Jim Day]

You know, there, there was some of that done, but we didn't do it. Yeah, okay. I think central did some of that stuff.

[Brent Tucker]

I know there was. There was like a lot done along the Ho Chi Minh trails. They were trying to figure out which.

[Jim Day]

One trail, you know, they would just.

[Brent Tucker]

Leave behind listing devices so they, so they could know, like, hey, this part of the trail is being used because we heard the truck.

[Tyler]

Even if they had that technology.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, I know.

[Nate]

I didn't know they could take phone lines.

[Brent Tucker]

They had this stay behind device. It was super cool. They would. It, it was like. It looked like a carpet bomb. Bomb when they, when they would bomb it all. But. And, but it wasn't a bomb. It was a stay behind device. And when it would. It would drive into the soil. Yeah, the, the, like behind the fins of. It was like a. Look like a dead tree, but it was a stay behind device. And they would know like, where they put it out. And then after it would. It would listen for a week, a couple weeks, and they'd have to go find it, pull it up, and then listen to it and they could find out when's the last time that trail was used. I love the Vietnam War with that.

[Nate]

Historically, questions for me.

[Brent Tucker]

So many cool things were done.

[Nate]

You guys were evading. Right. You know, you drop in, you start taking contact, you got to evade. Was it just run or were you guys. You guys set in any. We can't call them booby traps. I don't know if we can call them that anymore through the Geneva Convention, but did you guys.

[Brent Tucker]

Deterrence.

[Nate]

Deterrence. Did you guys leave any deterrence for the people tracking you?

[Jim Day]

Wait, we. We would put time fuses on claymore mines.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Nate]

So. Yes, yes.

[Jim Day]

You know, but. But I'll tell you, one of the most effective things in my mind was black pepper.

[Nate]

Black pepper.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Because if they get dogs chasing you.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

That'll stop them. Dogs just like that.

[Nate]

Really?

[Jim Day]

Yeah, you'll. You've. You've heard hounds as they chase something.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Got the black pepper.

[Nate]

So the NVA had dogs they would track you with?

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Not. Not often, but.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Yeah. I did not know that one time is too often.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

You prepared for it.

[Jim Day]

But I'm gonna go back to that Randall knife story. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Please do.

[Jim Day]

So this, this team is out there, okay. And there is a cobra in a bunker where they're planning on Ron, you know, well, you, you're not gonna sleep there, you know, because there's a freaking cobra there.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, is it, is it a baby cobra, like 16 foot? Because maybe.

[Jim Day]

Actually it was 13 and a half feet.

[Nate]

Oh my gosh.

[Jim Day]

Okay, so it was, it was a little one. Relatively speaking, it was a little one. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

There's a TT coat.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You've seen those Randall knives with, with the round handle.

[Brent Tucker]

Yep.

[Jim Day]

With a rubber tip so you can store stuff in.

[Brent Tucker]

That's right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So this lieutenant there was strap hanging. They checked up on us all the time.

[Nate]

Oh.

[Jim Day]

Because we weren't doing our job.

[Brent Tucker]

That lieutenant's gonna get you squared away.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, I got a story about that. But, but so he, he had one of those Randall survival knives. So they, they took some bamboo and put that handle in. In the bamboo for an extension. Yeah. And then went after the cobra. So guy pins the cobra through the hood right in the bunker, and then he's trying to maneuver the thing and the stupid bamboo come off the knife.

[Nate]

Oh, my God.

[Jim Day]

Now we're talking back in the late 60s, you know, that's, that's two, $300 knife, right?

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know?

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

And a two year wait list. Get one. You know, so anyway, now lieutenant's upset because his knife's in there with the.

[Brent Tucker]

Cobra right now it's per. Now it's personal.

[Jim Day]

They ended up finally killing the cobra.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Quietly. Yeah, well, that, that's important part.

[Brent Tucker]

Right. You just can't go apon. Like you got to do it quietly.

[Jim Day]

You got to do it quiet.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, but yeah, you guys are getting that knife, you know. Yes, sir.

[Nate]

Good.

[Brent Tucker]

Gosh.

[Nate]

No thanks.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah. Of all the books that, that I've read, that's why I love Talk is actually done. You can only get so much information, you know, from. And there's no. Never even. Never heard of cobra, to be honest with you. Yeah, Never thought. Never thought about that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. And. And there's so much misinformation out there.

[Brent Tucker]

People writing books with misinformation.

[Jim Day]

Yes, sir.

[Nate]

We know some guys like that. There's a book right there that looks pretty.

[Brent Tucker]

That's.

[Tyler]

Yeah. As old as time that like, I mean, our podcast and, and what we do, we get. We do catch some grief from time to time because people say like, you know, it's not nearly all negativity, but sometimes it's talking about people that claim stories and people say like, well, it. Just because Marcus Luttrell said he crawled three miles on his hands and knees to avoid being captured. Why do you have to Call him out on that. And it's because I just heard a story about a guy that actually did that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

And you know, things like, well, I didn't like Tim Kennedy saying, well, I. I didn't get a Purple Heart, but I was injured. There's guys that stood up and said, I'm going to go like that Purple Heart.

[Nate]

You're worried about actual injured without him?

[Tyler]

Yeah. Is the military going to tell my wife when I die over there that I died in a combat zone, or am I just going to be mia? And they still went up and they did it because they didn't worry about awards and ceremonies and Purple Hearts. So I just feel like this conversation alone warrants why we hold people accountable to their stories.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

What's your. Jim. I'd be interesting. What's your feelings on that? Obviously, stolen valor is a big thing. It's interesting. We think about stolen valor from the guy who never served, but it's a little bit different than the guy who did serve who tells the story about how he was in Mac V. SOG and has Purple Hearts. What's your feeling on that? Do you think it's the right thing to do to have our community. Community call those guys out? Or should it be, hey, we can't. We can't attack other veterans. You have. Do you have a. From your generation's perspective on that?

[Jim Day]

Well, I don't know about. For my generation, but I. I know how I feel about it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You call them out.

[Nate]

There you go.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Plain and simple.

[Brent Tucker]

Integrity has the line of. Integrity has to be kept. And who else is going to keep it? But. But your fellow veterans.

[Nate]

The way I look at it is.

[Brent Tucker]

Who know the truth.

[Nate]

All of us, you included, we had buddies get their lives doing it for real. And to me, that's why it matters is because in honor of them, we can't have people faking the funk.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Well, related. Okay. So one of the guys that graduated with me who served at ccs. Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Speak. Just a little closer to the mic. Hey, if you don't mind.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, I know.

[Brent Tucker]

You're good. You're good.

[Jim Day]

You. You guys would like it because he was a combo guy.

[Brent Tucker]

I didn't like being a combo guy.

[Jim Day]

That's why I would.

[Brent Tucker]

The Delta Force.

[Nate]

I should have done that. Brent.

[Jim Day]

So anyway, he did his own thing on. On the Internet years later.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Talking about running recon with Jerry Shriver.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Sorry.

[Nate]

And. And he wasn't.

[Jim Day]

I'm assuming he was a combo guy working in. Working underground. In the talk.

[Nate]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. Yeah. I had sponsored him for the SOA and so my original commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Tribute, who was on the board of directors for the SOA at the time, called me up and he said, they're talking about kicking you out of the soa but you. Yeah, because you sponsored a wannabe.

[Nate]

Oh, no.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. You know, and I said, no, I did not sponsor a wannabe. And I sent him a photo of this guy in Camp Torres.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Okay. I said, now I'm not responsible for the crappy puts on the Internet.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

You know.

[Brent Tucker]

Right.

[Jim Day]

But I happen to know for a fact that, you know, he was there.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Nate]

And that sounds very similar to a guy in that book.

[Brent Tucker]

But, you know, I mean, they went after you, and.

[Jim Day]

And.

[Brent Tucker]

And you proved yourself, and. But I tell you what I kind of like about this. Not only are they going after the fraud, they're going after anyone who supports that fraud. That was unjustified. You know, but that's how serious we should take it.

[Nate]

And, you know, it's funny, Jim.

[Brent Tucker]

What?

[Nate]

You should tell him how you met my dad, because it actually kind of. Not that my, you know, my dad obviously did what he did, but the way you met him was because you sort of have a pension for seeing guys that have Special Forces stickers on their trucks, and you make sure to verify that that's true.

[Brent Tucker]

The old trust verified.

[Nate]

Well, this was 20 years ago, you know, or more, but more.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, I would say that. Now, his dad loved to play poker, and Eugene has poker.

[Nate]

Still does. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. So I would see that pickup, and I would just leave my business card.

[Nate]

Big Special Forces sticker on the back.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. I just leave my business card, you know, And. And, you know, I put third group, fifth group, 12th group. That's all I'd say.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And I did that several times, you know, and Steve was not calling me, and I don't even know how we finally met, but he thought that I was, you know, checking to see whether he was, you know, legit. Legit.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. But I wasn't. I saw the Special Forces, and. And I don't know about you guys, but those are my favorite people in the world.

[Nate]

100. Yep.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. You know, the. My. My friends, you know, the people that I'm close to would be the saw guys first, the group guys second, you know, and then for some reason, I. I got in with the cops. I don't know. I don't know how that happened.

[Nate]

Now, there was my dad.

[Brent Tucker]

They grow on you?

[Nate]

My dad's always told me this story. Maybe you, you know, the actual, you know, guy who said it, Vietnam era, who famously said, I think it was, you know, all my friends are Green Berets. The only people I like are Green Berets. I barely like my wife because she's not a Green Beret. Somebody.

[Jim Day]

I've never heard that before.

[Nate]

Somebody from your era famously had said that. But no, you know, Jim, I think that might be interesting. Me and my dad talk about this a lot. And, you know, we talk about a common thread. And I think, you know, I could sit down with you. I can sit down with Brent. And it's almost this community. You just automatically resonate with guys that have done this job or. And not even just necessarily this. But with law enforcement, there's just. There's some common thread with. With men that do this type of job that's just different than anywhere else. You're going to find it in society. And we haven't ever been able to really define it, but you can feel it immediately. Right. Like the first time I met Brent, it's just immediate. Right. It's because you just have that connection with guys.

[Jim Day]

There's some Special Forces guys I don't particularly care for.

[Nate]

Oh, well, yeah, there's definitely that, but.

[Jim Day]

For the most part, and I always said this to your dad, I said, you know, the way I see it is you have a funnel, and a lot of guys go in the top, but very few guys come out the bottom.

[Nate]

That's true.

[Jim Day]

You know, and those guys are the guys that I feel empathy with immediately.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Now some of them pissed me off.

[Brent Tucker]

And, you know, well, you know, for me, whether it was law enforcement, SWAT team, you know, Green Berets, you know, military, I think the commonality are men who will raise their hand to protect vulnerable people against evil. That's. That's the common thread, right?

[Jim Day]

That. That sums it up for me and most people.

[Brent Tucker]

That's the generality. And the most people that I don't like who do those jobs is because they. That's what. That's who they're supposed to be. But they don't carry those ethos at the end of the day. And everyone who believes that and in their life does that. You can. You can. You can see right through that person almost immediately.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

So the, you know, the last thing we spent 19 months, you know, the stories we covered in the last, you know, hour, hour and a half will probably just, you know, scratch the. The surface. Like you said, we got. We got to let you Go home at some point. Which. Which I. If you say so.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

But.

[Brent Tucker]

But the coming home, you know, coming home from that and the. Again, I wasn't part of that. You know, obviously, that generation. I read a lot about it, you know, that the culture of that Vietnam generation, it's. Well, I say well known or documented, what we think is. But coming home, being a Vietnam veteran, how were you treated? How did you. How did you cope with it? What was your experience coming home from. From Vietnam?

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Tyler]

Well, was the VA given 100% disability? Serious question.

[Jim Day]

I. I don't know whether they were or not. I did get a 10% disability back in 1970, but before I got out of the Army, I got a 10% disability. I mean, so they were. They were set up there at Fort Lewis to. Yeah, to do the. You know, what's wrong with you now? I got the 10 because I had plasmodium falciparum twice while I was in Vietnam. Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

What'd you have?

[Jim Day]

Asmodium falciparum.

[Brent Tucker]

Don't.

[Jim Day]

Don't, you know, write it down right? Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

I don't even know where to. I can't spell that. What. What is that?

[Jim Day]

That. That is falciparum malaria.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay. And that's. That's the kind of malaria that kills 8 million people worldwide every year.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, wow.

[Jim Day]

You know, I mean, it's the bad stuff. And talk. Talking about that. So I come back from Vietnam, I go to college. Matter of fact, I got out of the army so I could go to college because we didn't have the online stuff or anything, you know, back in those days. But so the. The Red Cross shows up to do a blood drive. Okay, hey, I'll help my fellow man. I go over there, I fill out their form, go talk to the nurse, and she says, not no, but hell no, and don't ever come back.

[Nate]

Yeah, I think it's important, Brent. This is a really good. I mean, I know this because my dad's from that area, and he's a green brain. I know how he was treated, but things are very different. Me and Brent came back to a society post 911 that is so supportive of not only the military veterans, but Green Berets. That mission set. That is not. That is not what you guys came home to, and I think that's unfortunate.

[Jim Day]

Well, yeah. But let me tell you about coming home. Now, I told you about what happened when I was in college, but let me tell you about coming home. So I'm walking through the airport, San Francisco. Right.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Nate]

Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. Okay. We can imagine.

[Jim Day]

I have my Green Beret on, and I have my souvenir SKS over my shoulder.

[Brent Tucker]

Do you really? In the airport.

[Jim Day]

In the airport.

[Nate]

Different times.

[Jim Day]

Different times. And believe it or not, nobody said anything to me.

[Nate]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

You know, I mean, they sort of turned their heads away.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, but here. Here's an arm Green Beret being armed. Let's curse him out.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Nate]

No, also, just from my own curiosity, obviously, you know, you're very ingrained in, you know, the Special Operations community, Special Operations association, all of that. Now, did you continue that or were you, you know, like my dad? He pretty much shelved it for 30 years. He got out, put the beret in the closet, never talked about it again. And really, it was me sort of. Well, I'm meeting you, obviously, before. But it was really him sort of 30 years later being reintegrated into the community with you. Did you stick with. Did you sort of stick with that the whole time, or did you sort of put the beret away for a long time and then find it later?

[Jim Day]

And I think. And I don't think we talked about it on the podcast, but I think we talked about it earlier was, you know, I went to college with. There was four of us that graduated together from training group. We went to college together. We actually bought a house in Penn.

[Nate]

Oh, that's cool.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. So there's four of us in there.

[Brent Tucker]

The team continues. Yeah, the team room continues.

[Nate]

Absolutely.

[Jim Day]

Two of us were sock guys. Two of them were a team guys.

[Nate]

That's awesome. That's cool.

[Jim Day]

So. So my wife, who is 19 then, she has heard all those stories. Matter of fact, she said to me one year, I said, are you going to soar this year? Which is Special Operations association reunion. I said, deb, are you going to soar with me this year? Because she went most years, you know.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

And she says, jim, I have heard all those stories. I could tell those stories.

[Brent Tucker]

I'll be your date. Yeah, I'll go with you, but.

[Jim Day]

Okay. But you qualify.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Nate]

And we should talk about that afterwards. Yeah. You know, me. And I. And I need to do it, too, but you need to do it also. We both need to get. Yeah, we need to get into the Special Operators Association. They do a reunion in Vegas every year.

[Jim Day]

Every. Every year. And. And this year is SFA and SOA at the same time, same hotel. Okay. And your dad's already planning on you coming with him.

[Nate]

Yeah. And. And, you know, and Brent, we could talk about this. It's a little bit. Bit different in that we. Our era is sort of either still in or just got done fighting the global war on terror. And there's this big sort of break.

[Jim Day]

Yes.

[Nate]

Where our guys haven't really got into the community that they have that's a part of the SFA and the soa. And so I think it's kind of important for our generation to sort of start taking up the mantle and being a part of that, too, because when we're Jim's age, I would hate for us to look back and not have an sfa, not have an SOA and not be able to have that community.

[Jim Day]

A lot of guys from my era, they. They belong so they can get together, because you don't. You don't find us on the street.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

You know, now, I've always hung around, you know, other SFA guys and other SOA guys. You know, but something we were talking about earlier, going to Viet, going back to Vietnam. On the mic, Jim, my. My wife has always said, if you ever go back to Vietnam, I'm going with you. Okay. And I always said, no, hell, you're not. So she retired from the state of Oregon basically three times.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

Because they kept calling her back because nobody could do her job.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

You know, so in 2013, she told him, I'm not coming back. Okay. I'm done. Okay. So I said, all right, Deb. I said, where do you want to go in the world? I'll take you anywhere you want to go. Guess where we went. We went to Vietnam.

[Nate]

No.

[Brent Tucker]

Wow.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

How was that going back?

[Jim Day]

The first night was very emotional for me.

[Nate]

I bet.

[Jim Day]

Okay.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

But after that, it was a great time.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, and my wife, who is. Who is not the most outgoing person you ever want to meet. Okay. They. They told us that, you know, when you're on the street and all these people come up and try to sell you stuff, which they do.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. They said, you know, you. You can count on paying half of what they're asking.

[Nate]

Right.

[Jim Day]

You know. Right. She was getting stuff for a third of what they were asking, which shocked me to no end, because, like I said, she's always been the quiet one.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

It's. It's.

[Brent Tucker]

I think it's, you know, probably too. Still too new for me. But when you tell those stories, I. I couldn't think about going back to Afghanistan. I just. And very different countries. Yeah. At least there's some beach, you know, from property in Vietnam. There's, you know, there's the, the people and culture. Enough time has passed. They're, they're a lot different. They love Americans.

[Nate]

Yes.

[Brent Tucker]

You know, but.

[Nate]

Well, we even.

[Brent Tucker]

I don't know if I can go.

[Nate]

Back to Afghanistan, actually. I don't know if I can say that. I'm not going to say that. First group say something that's going to get me in trouble.

[Jim Day]

Well, you know, with, with Depp. You have to remember, though, she's heard all those stories, you know.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

You know, I mean, I guess we told them pretty good because she wanted to go see for herself. And, and we had a great time. We really did. But we, we went to Hong Kong, we went to Cambodia. Okay. We went to, you know, everywhere.

[Brent Tucker]

The last question that, that I have for you, because with, with our generation, you know, there's, there's special operation movies coming out. Some are good, some are bad.

[Nate]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

For the most part, I'm, I'm, I'm fairly pro. Movies like you have to have, you have to give that next generation a reason to what, to sign up.

[Nate]

I got something to caveat.

[Brent Tucker]

So you guys had a movie that I've seen 20 times and I'm a big fan of, but it's a classic now, so it's different. John Wayne and the Green Berets came out in 1968.

[Nate]

Yep.

[Brent Tucker]

Was that, was that a hit among the boys? The boys see that and be like, oh, yeah, that's like, well, that's at the time.

[Tyler]

What are you gonna ruin it for you, Britt?

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Or did you see the time how.

[Jim Day]

I was in training group at the time, so I didn't know the real story. But yes, they, they showed that movie at Bragg and it was full of young guys. You know, we all went to see it. Yeah.

[Nate]

What was the reaction positive or.

[Jim Day]

Well, we didn't, we didn't know whether it was true or not. After we graduated and got out there in the real SF world.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah.

[Jim Day]

We saw a few flaws.

[Brent Tucker]

Was it the. You just mentioned earlier those, the, like the demo team, the Gabriel team, or what was it called?

[Jim Day]

Gabriel demonstration area.

[Brent Tucker]

The Gabriel demonstrate that that team from the movie was the actual Gabriel demonstration team. The actual green brace. Did that were that were in the movie? Yeah, were the green brace. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

That's different than Chris Hemsworth.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Now, now they would have got Brent.

[Nate]

Tucker to be the star of 12, and that movie would have had very different reaction.

[Brent Tucker]

Oh, they'd have got mocked like, like act of Valor. With my acting skills, I can't, I can't do a read Ad properly. Much less acting to a movie.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Now, now, while. While we're talking about Gabriel demonstration, though, my first sergeant in training group was one of the guys, you know, at Gabriel, and his job was to show how they eat snakes. I know that's sort of funny. Yeah, yeah. Because. Because those of you that don't know, we're called snake eaters. Okay. And he started it, I think.

[Brent Tucker]

Okay.

[Jim Day]

But so President Kennedy came. They take him out to the Gabriel demonstration area. And so he's showing them how to skin a snake and all this stuff. And the President says to him, said, Sergeant. Now, he just made E7 sergeant first class. Said, Sergeant, what would you do if you didn't have a knife?

[Nate]

Oh, yeah, I noticed.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

Have you heard this story?

[Brent Tucker]

No.

[Nate]

Oh, man.

[Jim Day]

He grabbed a snake and that's where.

[Nate]

The story comes from.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

In front of jfk.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

Way to represent.

[Nate]

And JFK almost threw up.

[Jim Day]

I don't know what JFK did other than he promoted him to master sergeant.

[Brent Tucker]

Are you serious?

[Jim Day]

I am serious. And that was the youngest master sergeant in the army at the time.

[Brent Tucker]

And that was the second time JFK had his mind blown.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Brent Tucker]

We'Re gonna cut that out. The first time. The second time, please. We're gonna cut that off.

[Nate]

Yeah, that's like, cut out.

[Brent Tucker]

I couldn't help myself. I had to. That was just for us. That joke was for us.

[Nate]

That's messed up joke, but, you know, dark humor. Yeah.

[Jim Day]

Yeah.

[Nate]

A bunch of Green Berets. We can't say that.

[Jim Day]

Yeah, Well, I. I still remember when that happened.

[Nate]

Yeah, yeah. No, Yeah, I would.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. I mean, I was in. I was in high school when that happened.

[Nate]

Okay. So that. Yeah, that would have been before 63. Yeah. Yeah. So.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, the, the last question I'll ask you, since we've berated you with nothing but questions and you've. You've answered all of. I. I cannot tell you how much I. I appreciate you coming to the podcast. Telling. Telling the stories. The next generation has to hear these. These stories. And I. I almost feel weird asking this question because you've already. You've given us so many. The same question we ask every guest is, give us a funny story. It's how we finish the show. Can you think of another funny story that you got somewhere in your back pocket that maybe jumps out of you? That, that.

[Jim Day]

Well, I'm thinking a lot of stories, and I'm not sure there's any funny in there, you know, But I will.

[Brent Tucker]

Give you a pass if you can't think Right off the bat, because you've. You've given us some good ones. Oh, yeah. They. They were already. Already in the show.

[Jim Day]

Yeah. Well, give me a second to think.

[Brent Tucker]

I'll give you a second to think some.

[Jim Day]

Because there was some funny stuff. There's.

[Nate]

Yeah, there always is. That's what a lot of people don't understand, where you're like, war. It's. It's ugly. It's all the parts of it, but then there's also just stuff that happens.

[Brent Tucker]

All right, I'm gonna tell. I'm gonna tell you a funny story. Okay. I don't think I've told you this story because you talked about snakes. Remind me.

[Nate]

I was thinking. Brent told me this story yesterday, and as soon as you start talking about.

[Brent Tucker]

Green berets and badass, I don't know if I told the story. No, it's not that.

[Nate]

Okay, good.

[Brent Tucker]

This is a good one for you too. I'm in Iraq, so we have two comma guys on the team, and we would. We would switch out. One guy would. Would go on the assaults, and the other combo guy would have to be with the command element. It was my turn to be on the command element, so I was already upset. I had my. My. My satcom radio, you know, on my back. Had my hand mic, you know, and sitting right next to the. To the team leader in case you want to call up or in case I was calling up stuff for phase lines or whatever. And I go to a knee because it's heavy, and I. I hear something to my left. Nothing, too. Just something when me made me want to look. And so I turn. When I turned out of the. Out of the kind of peripheries of this is not at night, but it's kind of a full moon out of my, you know, peripheries, I could see what felt like a snake drag across. And then I felt it go over my leg, and I was like, that's not what I thought it was. And I whipped over real quick to the right, and it. And it crawled back over my leg going the other way. So I jumped up real quick, and I screamed quietly like a man. And my team looks at me and goes, what is wrong with you, Brent? And when I jumped up, I realized my. My mic was on. The cord was dangling. It had undangled. And when I looked left, it dragged across my leg. And for whatever reason, never saw a snake Iraq in my life. My first thought was, there's a snake. There's a snake on my leg.

[Jim Day]

And then when I looked the other.

[Brent Tucker]

Way for I thought the snake did a 180 and went across. That was where my mind was.

[Nate]

CO. Bolted over the top of your body.

[Brent Tucker]

Scared the crap crap out of me. And when he said, what's wrong with you, Brent? I couldn't come. I could. I was so embarrassed, I couldn't tell what was wrong. I said, oh, nothing. I saw. I thought I saw something move, but it was nothing. And he was like, all right, weirdo. And it wasn't until we got back to base that I had that I told him. What? What? What? The ghost snake story that almost made me lose my mind.

[Nate]

That's funny.

[Brent Tucker]

Well, I was. I think that's right.

[Nate]

We do have to let you go home.

[Brent Tucker]

Yeah, I know.

[Jim Day]

Thank goodness.

[Brent Tucker]

Thank you. Thank goodness.

[Jim Day]

Well, I like home.